Leatherhead Station & Stationmasters House
We welcomed Andy Davies, Chief Archivist of the RCTS to our February meeting to speak about the history of Leatherhead station and the station master’s house, and the RCTS library which is now housed there.
Railways reached Leatherhead in 1859 with the opening of the Epsom and Leatherhead Railway, Epsom having been reached by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway in 1847 with a line from West Croydon. Leatherhead became part of inter-company rivalry with the original station being used by the London & South Western Railway and the London Brighton & South Coast Railway opening its own station in 1867. The original station was relocated south and south west of the LBSCR station in February 1885
With the grouping of the railways in 1923 Leatherhead came within the remit of the Southern Railway. Electric trains arrived in July 1925 with the Dorking and Guildford New Line scheme. The line to Guildford was diverted to serve the LBSCR station at Leatherhead in 1927, and the LSWR station was closed. The LSWR’s running lines through the station were then used as carriage sidings, but the track was lifted in the 1980s.
The LBSCR’s station master’s house was an integral part of the station. It was last used as such in the 1990s, following which it fell into a state of disrepair. It became a Grade 2 listed building in 1997. Refurbishment work that was completed in 2017 enabled it to house the RCTS library from 2018.
Andy gave a brief history of the RCTS library, noting that following the formation of the Society in 1928 a library was established in 1935. At various times this was located at the Railway Clearing House building, Eversholt House, and Uxbridge. With an expanding collection the library outgrew the space available at Uxbridge and was fortunate to be able to take over six rooms of the former station master’s house at Leatherhead. One of the rooms is named after Terry Silcock who was the society’s librarian from 1979 to 2011. Much archiving, scanning and cataloguing has been carried out since the move.